American Home Shield Improves Sale Efficiency Through Mobile Strategy

American Home Shield (AHS), a subsidiary of ServiceMaster, operates as a trusted name in the business of American home warranties. As America’s “Most Recommended Home Warranty Provider,” American Home Shield is committed to helping homeowners find the coverage they deserve.

Challenge

AHS tasked the Elite SEM Paid Search team with increasing sales volume and calls to their call center—while maintaining cost per sale goals. The team also aimed to cut inefficient spending where possible to add to overall profit.

Solution

Elite’s Paid Search team discovered that AHS customers were engaging on mobile more than ever: mobile usage grew from 23% of all users in 2016 to 32% in 2017. With an increased importance of mobile in the AHS customer experience, Elite decided to craft a mobile-specific strategy and got to work.

The first tactic deployed was a device and designated market area (DMA) profitability campaign. Elite analyzed DMA data and found that profitability varied by area. To better allocate budget based on location-specific profitability, the team restructured the AHS account: the greater the profit, the larger share of the budget. Areas with lower profit received portions of the budget in a cascading manner. Areas that were not profitable were excluded across brand and non-brand terms. Each DMA was then segmented by device to control where and when mobile volume was pushed.

Next, Elite used Advanced Bid Adjustments to place positive bid modifiers for call extensions to show up more frequently across mobile campaigns. This allowed further control over the campaign, and enabled bidding up during call hours to boost inbound call volume.

To complete this mobile engagement strategy, Elite implemented the Google SMS beta, which offered customers the option to text the AHS live chat center directly from a mobile ad on the SERP—becoming one of the first advertisers to adopt this beta.

Results

After implementing the device and DMA profitability campaign segmentation, AHS reported a 30% boost in sale volume YoY at a 10% lower cost per sale. They were able to allocate 63% of their budget to the highest profitable DMAs in 2017, 28% to the DMAs that yielded above-average profitability, and under 10% to DMAs that were just below goal profitability.

Advanced Bid Adjustments saw 34% stronger CTR YoY for overall on mobile. Call extensions also saw 112% more impressions and 104% more clicks YoY. In Q2, the team saw 90% lower CPL and 764% stronger CVR, as well as a +110% lift in sales from phone calls.

The Google SMS Beta resulted in 37.5% message through rate (MTR), allowing AHS to track how many people completed the text message once clicking on the extension. This campaign also led to a 6% CPC savings when the extension showed, increasing overall profitability. This first mover beta adoption allowed AHS to engage with their audience in a new way, while also staying on target with defined KPIs.